


Tomorrow the Sun

by theneonpineapple



Series: Welcome to Kepler [6]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Cryptozoology, Gen, Missing Scene, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-11-27 17:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18197270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theneonpineapple/pseuds/theneonpineapple
Summary: It's a long and dark road from the Pine Guard's founding to now, and Madeline Cobb has been there for all of it.Or: the meticulously researched and so far canon compliant Mama backstory fic no one asked for but you're all getting.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In the words of Griffin McElroy himself:
> 
> "Mama has been hunting monsters... for 30 years now, and has lost a lot of friends to them, and lost her adult life doing anything else but hunting them." 
> 
> Thanks for the flavor text, Griffin!

**Cobb Residence**

**35 Forest Rd, Kepler, WV 24927**

(August 10, 1987)

Mads shifted her bag over her shoulder as she came up the front walk. The door was slightly ajar - she grinned a little. Val must be eager to see her. “It’s me,” she called as she pushed it open. When no reply came, and her sister didn’t immediately rush out to tackle her in a hug, she added, “Val?”

The dining room was empty, and she didn’t hear anyone in the kitchen. She poked her head into the living room. “Mom? Dad?”

The silence was decidedly weird, unless they weren’t home. Maybe they’d gone down to the store to get something for dinner, in which case she’d have to mock them for needing three people to run an errand.

She came round the couch just to be sure Dad hadn’t fallen asleep there despite the lack of his usual background of the IndyCar series - maybe Mom had turned it off to spare the electric bill, and he just wasn’t snoring for once.

But the couch was empty.

In the center of the living room there was a pool of - it couldn’t be blood. That made no sense. Nor did the weird footprints in the trail leading down the hall to… “VAL!”

She sprinted down the hall to Val’s room, catching herself in the open doorway. “No, no, no, no--”

Her parents, her sisters in a pile thrown over each other, the grisly tableau almost eclipsed in horror by the creature standing over them, framed in the window by the light of the setting sun.

Mads ran.

Down the hall, to her parents' room, the hunting rifle in the closet - she grabbed it and fumbled for the ammunition - she got it loaded and pumped it in time for the thing to come around the corner, slowed by its wingspan in the hall. And then she froze.

It stared at her, its beady angular eyes boring into hers, and she stared back.

Her skin crawled. Wrong, some deeply buried lizard brain instinct told her. This thing was wrong. It shouldn't exist. And she needed to move she needed to shoot it she needed to -

It broke eye contact as it fled and suddenly she remembered herself and fired off a shot, which went wide. She pumped it again and stumbled forward, like she was moving through water, as she fought the remaining haze in her mind. The thing screeched, louder than the gun, loud enough to leave her ears ringing as it burst through the window in Val's room and vanished.

Blood, thought Mads. So much fucking blood. She pulled the bodies out of the awful pile, her mind still buzzing with that strange fog, keeping the gun in reach in case the thing came back. The cops. She needed to call the cops. She needed to tell them her family was -

She didn't remember walking into the kitchen or dialing but suddenly she heard the ringing. The phone was shaking in her hand. She'd left a handprint on the side of the fridge, another on the wall next to the phone.

"Hello?" the voice at the other end of the line repeated.

"This is Madeline Cobb," said Mads. "I live - my parents live at 35 Forest Road. Topside. They're dead. They're all dead. There was something in the house and I - I need help. They're dead. I don't know, I don't know what it was, it wasn't human, it was - it was a monster, please, please send help, I can't..."

"Madeline? Madeline, is your sister there? You said your parents are dead is your sister--"

* * *

**Amnesty Lodge**

**35 Forest Rd, Kepler, WV 24927**

(February 17, 2019)

Mama was biting her tongue. Not quite literally, yet, but that was a near thing too. Her knee-jerk reaction had been wanting to rip the Pine Guard a new one, all things considered. But it wouldn’t be fair. Yes, two people had died and more were in the hospital. Yes, Jake Coolice was involved despite her usual preference to keep the boy far, far away from these hunts. Yes, their fact gathering mission hadn’t exactly turned up much besides concern about Dani, if Barclay and Aubrey’s tense conversation were any indication, and the concerning but ultimately not terribly relevant information that something was watching them through a damn rift.

But. There wasn’t much information to be had.They’d talked to survivors and witnesses, they’d visited the scene, what else could they do? But people were dead, and they had nothing actionable to the aim of keeping more people from dying the same way.

People were dead, the first night of the new cycle, and try as she might to look at that logically, it still felt like a dereliction of duty. This was their job. This was her solemn fucking oath: to make sure exactly this didn’t happen.

This was the worst kind of hunt. There wasn’t any ramp up to the killings, so there wasn’t time to deal with the fact that information was sometimes a little hard to come by. The opening salvo had a body count. A higher body count than the last one, which had also killed on the first go.

They were winning battles, but it was starting to feel like they were losing the war.

And then the ground began to shake, and Barclay and Aubrey turned away from each other. “Oh, thank god, the Fast and the Furious crew are here, now we’re safe,” Aubrey quipped.

But Barclay was looking to Mama with no little fear in his eyes. She jerked her head to the stairwell. She shielded her eyes against the gleam of a dozen motorcycle headlights, and as her vision adjusted her heart sank like a lead balloon. Every single person was carrying some sort of weapon - crow bars, tire irons, a hockey stick, baseball bats. This was a mob.

Mama moved between Barclay and the armed mob of hooligans as a familiar young man looked at Aubrey fearfully. Keith. Fuck, fuck, and double fuck.

And at the lead of the arrowhead formation of bikes, stood a figure who didn’t seem nervous in the slightest. They tucked their helmet under the arm and stepped forward. Backlit by the headlights, it was hard to read their facial expression, but their body language was clear.

Hostile, but not jumpy in the slightest. A sort of coiled fury, like a cougar prowling. “So you all heard what happened at our place last night, right?”

Mama’s blood went cold.

“Yeah,” said Aubrey.

“Yyyyep,” Duck said, and then, “Real sorry about it.”

Hollis nodded to themselves a little, not agreement or confirmation, just… the way you had to nod, sometimes, when someone said something both useless and completely expected. And, “Yeah, it’s awful.”

* * *

**Kepler Jewish Cemetery**

**74 Main St, Kepler, WV 24927**

(August 17, 1987)

“I didn’t really say, but - I’m sorry about your folks,” said Thacker.

“Yeah,” she said, in a tone that invited him to shut the hell up. She was glad he’d waited til now to say something, because if he’d given her that line a few days ago she would’ve ignored him completely, and they never would’ve killed that thing.

Wisely, Thacker paid heed.

“Let me out here, would you?” She asked.

“You sure you don’t want me to come with?”

“No, I’m good.”

He nodded, and pulled to a stop at the curb just past the cemetery gates. “Pancakes after this?” He asked, when she made to climb out of the car.

“We’ll take em to go,” she said. “If there’s more of these things like you say, then we’re gonna need to start getting ourselves a game plan in place.”

“Good thinkin’.”

She remembered getting out and shutting the door behind her, and she remembered taking the first step and thinking, I’ll have to jump across that little drainage ditch - and then she was standing in front of the freshest graves in the cemetery. One was a joint grave, with a broad, low marble tombstone, inlaid with a round photograph of her parents’ wedding day.

Her mother’s name on the left, her father’s on the right, their different birth dates and their fathers’ names listed underneath each. Their marriage date listed under their photo. And then a single date at the bottom. A complete convergence of two lives.

And to the right, a single tombstone. An etching of an olive tree that Mads had designed herself to adorn it.

_Here Lies_

_Beloved Daughter and Sister_

_Valerie Asheirah Cobb,_

_Daughter of Joseph Cobb_

_Born 24th of Cheshvan, 5730_

_She died 15th of Av, 5747_

_May her soul be bound up in the bond of life._

She felt numb; the only thing grounding her to her body was the twisting, nauseating guilt that laid low in her stomach.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should’ve been there. But I’m going to make sure this never happens again. I’m going to make you proud. I promise.”

* * *

 

**Mount St Helens, WA**

(July 13, 1924)

He hadn’t even done anything.

The springs were good, full of this alien planet’s energy, and even with the crystal around his neck, sometimes it was nice to not be rationed by the limited size of the crystal. He’d been approaching to take a dip when two humans came up, and he’d ducked behind the tree - but it was hard to be stealthy at a cool seven feet tall. He should’ve just put his disguise back on. He would’ve put his disguise back on, except he’d left it in the cave where he’d gone to change forms. Dammit.

There had been no threat. No charge. No roar. Just him, trying to hide behind a tree. He should’ve expected the gunshot, the bullet that grazed the top of his head. He should’ve known.

He ran. The cave was a little ways away, up the side of a sheer cliff, which wasn’t much of a problem for him, and would hopefully deter his pursuers.

When the second shot rang out, echoing in the gorge, he realized his mistake.

Sometimes, when you mess up, the universe does something to remind you, hey, that was a fucking mistake. It came in the form of a bullet lodging itself in his back, just inches from his spine.

Luckily - luckily - Barclay was pretty tough. Not many things could take a bullet to the back and live.

Very few things, however, could take a hit like that and keep holding onto a sheer cliff face, claws or no.

He had the time and presence of mind to think, this is gonna hurt, in the seconds it took for him to hit the ground.

It took him a while to come to. Pain coursed through him. The gouge across his head, the bullet in his back, they both faded to the unpleasant certainty that he’d bruised about half of his body. His entire body throbbing and aching, he laid there for a while. Too long, probably. They might be looking for him still.

He needed to get to the charm that offered his human disguise. But the cliff looked a lot taller now, and very far away, and in fact the edges of it were blurry and dark so how could he climb shadow…

Barclay woke up again and rolled onto his side. How long had he been here? Hours, judging by the setting sun. He was going to fucking die out here.

He wondered what Morrison and Luke and Ava would think, if he never came back to the camp. They’d find his body like this, and never the human form. They’d never find Barclay, their mild-mannered human friend, dead or alive. Someone would find the body of a nameless monster and lug his corpse around making people pay to see the beast of Mount St Helens--

 _Stop feeling sorry for yourself_ , he thought. _Get up_ **.**

He pushed himself slowly to his hands and knees. Immediately he wanted to collapse back into the dirt.

_You’re going to quit now? Get off your knees and face death on your feet._

Great, now his internal monologue sounded like Luke.

He got up. His head swam. Yeah, there was no way he could get up that cliff like this.

Staggering sometimes, his shoulders hunched, Barclay made his way back through the woods and towards the cabin he’d seen a few days ago.

* * *

**Amnesty** **Lodge**

**35 Forest Road, Kepler, WV, 24297**

(February 5, 1988)

“Oh, great, this doesn’t look like we’re being led to our deaths at all,” Gen muttered.

Mads didn’t look at her as she picked her way across the lot that had once held her family’s house. “You wanna go back to the Sheriff’s Office, be my guest,” she said.

She could feel the prickle of three pairs of eyes on her as she crouched down and brushed some ash and dirt away from the doors to the cellar. Gen whistled, long and low and impressed, when she pulled them up and open.

“A secret hideout?”

“It’s just a root cellar.” She paused. “It may have a secret back room for bootlegging reasons.”

“Incredible,” said Gen.

“I can show you how to erase any records of the back room existing,” said Franc. “Did you really burn this place down yourself?”

“Sometimes a gas leak is just a gas leak,” Mads told her.

“Is this one of those times?”

“No.”

They filed into the cellar, and Mads dragged the card table she and Thacker had been using over to the metal trunk in the corner. “Not exactly five stars, but that oughta work as a bench for two of us,” she said. She pulled up one of the chairs and sat down.

Thacker took the other chair, and Gen and Franc hopped up on the trunk.

“So,” said Mads. She set the bag of spun Sylvan wool on the table with her sketchbook. “Monster huntin’.”

“Monster hunting,” Gen said.

“I think they’re technically hostile aliens,” said Franc. “But yeah, monsters. Abominations, the sylphs called ‘em.”

She nodded a little. “I don’t know about y’all, but… my purpose, on this planet, is to leave the world a better place than it was when I found it. And I know that’s gonna be an uphill battle, not to mention a dangerous one. ‘Specially now that I’m trying to keep Sylvain safe too. Because - well, we’re the ones who damaged it. Humans, I mean. But also because I don’t see why we should stop at saving just our world, when another world also needs our help.”

“Do you really think they’ll help us like they said?” Gen asked.

“It’s in their best interest,” said Thacker.

Privately, Mads thought it didn’t matter, but she didn’t want to argue that.

“Our objectives are pretty simple. We stop these Abominations and protect Kepler. We keep the Gate, and Sylvain, a secret. No one outside the four of us can know - even Sheriff Nealy’s on a need-to-know basis, and he doesn’t need to know about Sylvain. Regardless of how altruistic y’all feel toward Sylvain, we gotta remember that they’ve got magic. If a war does break out, Earth won’t be unaffected.”

Gen ticked it off on her fingers. “The magic archway and the spooky monster planet on the other side are both top secret, and we kill the monsters before they can kill anyone.”

“But not all of them,” said Mads.

“Beg your pardon?” She said.

“Moira said the hot springs out towards the edge of my property, they can sustain the folks like her who come through peaceful like. So we help them, so they don’t go feral. I got an idea about that, actually.”

“This is a lot of moving parts, Mads,” said Thacker.

“I know, Doc. That’s why I’m proposin’ some permanence.”

She opened the notebook to a page covered in rough sketches of a building - the view from outside at the front, the rough layout from above, a few close-ups of room designs. “What’s another ski lodge to a place like Kepler? We build this, we put in pumps to make the hot springs a more permanent feature, and exiled sylphs can live here. As can all of you. If we do this - settin’ aside just not going to prison, Gen and Franc, or proving you’re not crazy, Doc and Franc - you’ll have a home. Rent free, warded against monsters, full of a secret cache of weapons,” she pointed to the metal trunk they were both sitting on, “and with a blind eye from Sheriff Nealy if you want to do some crime, or some spyin’, or some weird science.”

“It’s a good cover story,” said Thacker. “With a built in source of revenue. I’m impressed.”

“We protect Sylvain, hide the gate, keep the secret. We give the exiled sylphs a home, keep ‘em sane, give ‘em access to the springs. And we stop the monsters before they leave the one mile radius - we save Kepler, and we save the world. A team.”

“A team,” repeated Thacker. “I can work with that.”

“A secret society,” said Franc, eyes wide and starry.

Gen threw up her hands. “Oh, what the hell, count me in.”

“I’m gonna make some patches out of this wool, so we can all visit Sylvain, and I’m gonna have ‘em match. It’s a pretty, uh, innocuous design. I was thinkin’ if we get caught with em we can say we’re an environmentalist group, which’ll help explain how come we’re always in the woods.”

Franc leaned forward. “What’re you thinking?”

Mads turned the page to a single pine tree, standing tall in a circle, light and geometric. “What do y’all think?”

“What colors?”

“I was - I mean, I was just gonna do the tree with the white thread on a black background for the patch.”

“Can I?” Franc pointed to the sketchbook.

“Sure.”

Franc pulled out a pencil from the depths of an enormous jacket and started to add arching lines in the background of the tree. “I can show you how to dye the wool. I’m thinking a sort of gradient effect of colors here, like this. Maybe pink fading up to blue, like a sunrise, with the tree kind of… a silvery mint green?”

“I like the gradient, and dyeing the wool is a good plan, but that sounds like a fucking Easter basket,” said Mads. She paused. “What about a sunset? A soft yellow to harvest gold to burnt sienna, with a dark green tree?”

“Sounds sweet,” Gen agreed.

“We have an accord,” said Franc.

“What do we call ourselves?” Gen asked. “Should sound like an environmentalist group, too, right?”

“Kepler Treehuggers Society?” Franc suggested.

“I think it should also reflect our actual purpose,” said Thacker.

Mads hmm’d. “I’m not the best with words.”

“Forest Watch?” Suggested Gen. “Protectors of the Forest?”

Thacker frowned. “Forest Watch is good, but it sounds like a park services thing. Protectors of the Forest is a little too… Lord of the Rings.”

“Tree Guardians?” Franc chimed in.

“Pine Guardians,” said Gen.

And Thacker slapped the table, making all of them jolt a little. “The Pine Guard,” he said.

“I love it,” Gen said.

“Sweet,” said Franc.

They all looked to Mads. And she smiled. “It’s perfect.”

* * *

**A** **mnesty Lodge**

**35 Forest Road, Kepler, WV, 24297**

(February 17, 2019)

“I’m new with this obviously, but is the plan that you usually keep us, you know, the rest of the town, in the dark and then after someone gets slaughtered then you step in to clean up the mess?” Hollis asked, their voice shaking with barely disguised rage.

“That’s been working so far for us,” muttered Ned.

_Has it?_

Mama had made the objectives of the Pine Guard herself. Had crafted them down in that cellar thirty years ago, with her mind still brimming from what they’d learned in Sylvain, full of this certainty that they could save their town, working in the shadows for the good of two worlds.

Kill monsters. Protect Kepler. Help the exiles. Keep Sylvain safe. Secret, all of it secret. Monsters, danger, sylphs, Sylvain, they all had to be secret. Calling it bear attacks, gas leaks, freak accidents, crazy coincidence.

And the risks that that imposed ignorance put on Kepler’s citizens, well. If they did their damn jobs, they’d be able to mitigate those. But they weren’t perfect, couldn’t be expected to be perfect, and those times when things slipped through, Kepler was full of unsuspecting targets.

Like her family.

Like Hollis’s friends.

Except when her family had died, she’d found that there was nothing and no one that stood between the Abominations and innocent people in Kepler. And when Hollis’s friends were murdered right in front of them, they’d found that someone did know. And they still hadn’t saved them.

Mama wanted nothing more than to apologize to Hollis and the other Hornets. She didn’t know what, exactly, she’d say if she could - I promised my dead family I would keep shit like this from happening to anyone else and I failed you and I failed them and I’m so fucking sorry? - but it was a moot point.

The rules and objectives of the Pine Guard were simple. Keep the secrets. Stop the monsters. Help the innocents. She’d developed increasingly careful ways of inducting new members, too - ones that didn’t accommodate bringing on an entire armed mob and hoping for the best.

She couldn’t apologize. Couldn’t bring herself to chase these folks who weren’t much different from her, as she’d been thirty years ago, off her property with her shotgun. Couldn’t bring herself to try to lie to Hollis like Aubrey and Ned and even Duck were doing.

Mama stayed frozen, between Barclay and the mob, then between Barclay and Stern, as things spiralled more and more out of control.

Hollis is tough and charismatic, Keith is clearly both smart and sneaky, their moral compasses look to be in the right place.

They brought an armed mob to my front door and intend to go rushing in knowing they don’t have all the facts. You can’t trust them.

We need them.

We can’t trust them.

Barclay was frozen too, like a deer in the headlights, and the panicked look in his eyes didn’t diminish when they retreated back to the cellar. As the Pine Guard talked nonsense about identity thieves and genies and camera drones, he grew more and more tense. He’d been chased by mobs before, she knew. Running panicked through the woods with hunters after him.

And when they finally seem to remember that Mama and Barclay are present, with Duck saying, “Yeah, how have you dealt with stuff like this in the past, Mama?”, she just stared at Duck for a second.

“Y’all,” she said, harrowed, “there ain’t never been—there ain’t never been a situation like this before. And for once, Ned, it seems like I can’t blame this one on you.”

“Gotta be some way to blame it on Ned. Don’t give up, Mama,” Duck grinned, just a little.

She sighed, while Aubrey snorted.

“I… We’ve been trying to keep the peace discreetly for decades now, and it’s been workin’.” Until now. Did she make a mistake, bringing these three in? Did she choose wrong again?

She looked to Aubrey and tried to remind herself that Aubrey, at least, she’d chosen deliberately. Something in that girl had sparked recognition in Mama even before she saw her do real magic. She had to believe, to keep believing, that Aubrey could be her successor.

“Listen, I’m about to get forced into retirement, and I’ve made peace with that, but I can’t feel comfortable about the idea of leavin’ just like a handful of y’all to, y’know, fight against deadly supernatural threats every two months or so.”

They’d realized so quickly, then, that four wasn’t enough to share the burden of their work. They’d trusted more people. Leta. Mike. Gen’s crew. Jules. Reece. That had worked, hadn’t it? Aubrey could hold her people together the way Mama had failed to, if she just warned the girl...

“And if they have the opportunity to add some more muscle behind your efforts, I don’t see why n—”

And then Barclay took off his bracelet, and tossed it onto the table with one enormous, furry hand.

“In case you all have forgotten,” he said, “I’m Bigfoot.”

* * *

**M** **ount St Helens, WA**

(July 17, 1924)

Ava had her jacket wrapped tightly around herself, her arms folded over it, standing in the door of the cabin. Morrison was talking to her in a low voice, and neither of them seemed to register Barclay’s approach.

Which gave him time to look over at the crowd of people gathering in the camp. There were an awful lot of guns out, and a fair few lanterns.

A shiver ran down Barclay’s spine and he cleared his throat. “Did I miss somethin’?”

Ava and Morrison both turned, and Morrison ran over to clap him in a hug, while Ava just stood there looking dumbfounded.

“You’re alive!” She said.

“Course I’m alive,” said Barclay, like hadn’t come damn near close to dying a few times before he got his charm back. He patted Morrison on the back before Morrison stepped back, but didn’t release him, just held Barclay at arm’s length and looked him over.

Barclay just hoped he’d done a good enough job of patching up the wound after he’d gouged the bullet out with a claw that it wouldn’t bleed through the shirt. Luckily he had a hat to cover the graze on his head, and the bruises on his back and arms were covered by his clothes.

“There’s some sorta creatures out there, Barclay,” said Morrison. “After you didn’t come home for days and those things attacked Beck and his lot, we thought for sure you were dead.”

“Creatures?” Barclay said.

Luke came over. There was a rifle slung across his back and a map - a map Barclay had helped him make - in his hands. “Ape-like beasts, dozens of ‘em, seven feet tall at least,” he said. “Sounds like they were lucky to make it out alive. You didn’t see nothing out there?”

“Saw a coupla elk, think I heard a cougar,” he lied. “We’ve lived here for years. Don’t you think we’d’ve seen it if there were apes runnin’ around?”

“Maybe they’re migratory,” Ava said softly.

“Or maybe this Beck’s just sellin’ this to the press. Certainly nothing you need to look so fearful about, Ava,” he added.

“I was concerned about you,” she said. “You’ve been gone for days, without warning.”

“I…” Barclay hesitated, and covered the need for a lie with faux embarrassment as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I fell in the river.” He rolled up his sleeve to show some of the more egregious bruising along his arm.

Immediately Morrison took his arm and ran his fingertips lightly over the bruises, hissing when he found a scrape and reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief.

“I’m lucky I didn’t break anything, and it took me a while to dry out my clothes enough to head back, but it - I was too nervous to use my usual foot trails after that. Had to take a longer route home. Hey!”

Morrison had wet his handkerchief with a splash from his flask and started cleaning tacky dried blood from the scrapes on Barclay’s arm. “You’re going to get an infection,” Morrison chided.

Ava moved closer. “How many times have I told you that your insistence on using the steepest, narrowest, most dangerous paths available--”

“You were right and I was stupid,” Barclay forestalled the rest of the rant.

She narrowed her eyes and then slugged him on the shoulder. “Damn you,” she said quietly. “I thought you were dead. Morrison has hardly slept.”

“Shut up,” said Morrison. His cheeks were flushed.

Barclay reached up with his other hand to stay Morrison’s attempts to scrub Barclay’s arm down with a rotgut-damp handkerchief. “I’m fine,” he said.

Luke coughed, and Morrison yanked his hand out from under Barclay’s and let go of his arm.

“Sheer dumb luck,” he proclaimed. “See if I worry about you next time you disappear.”

“We’re running out of daylight,” said Luke, pointedly. “Shift your ass, Morrison. Barclay, if those terrible wounds of yours aren’t keeping you from being able to walk, I want you to join us.”

“Join y’all?” He looked out over the tidy crowd gathered on the other edge of camp. “I don’t mind going out, but t’what aim?”

“We’re gonna hunt down these apes and kill ‘em before they kill us,” said Luke.

Barclay’s heart pounded. “No,” he said. “Luke, you’re wastin’ valuable time and energy chasing a campfire story.” He looked at Morrison. “You’re not going along with this, are you?”

“If there’s something out there, we gotta know,” said Morrison. “It’s worth checking.”

And Barclay glanced away, trying to compose himself, and saw Morrison’s rifle leaning against the wall of the cabin.

And he looked at them, people he’d thought were good - if hot-tempered, in Luke’s case - and kind and understanding, ready to go out and kill a monster and it was all too easy to picture. It could’ve been Morrison who shot him, instead of Beck and his lot. It was Morrison who was going to go out there to search for him, to try and kill him, along with this entire fucking mob.

And he hadn’t even done anything wrong.

* * *

**Amnesty Lodge**

**35 Forest Ln, Kepler, WV, 24297**

(February 17, 2019)

Barclay liked Aubrey. He really did. He’d been pushing Mama to find herself a successor for years, someone human who could lead the Pine Guard and be the go-between for the Lodge and Sylvain, who could walk into danger without risking a human coming across them without their disguise and ruining everything.

And when she’d found someone with magic, well, he wasn’t proud of it, but he was privately glad that she’d be forced to have a vested interest in keeping their secret. After all, humans would gladly dissect one of their own to see what made her magic tick. It was an awful, cynical thing to think. But it meant the exiles would be safer, in the hands of a Pine Guard led by Aubrey, than by another human.

Except right now, he kind of wanted to throttle the girl.

Jake had dark circles under his eyes, and he was slumped in his chair. It’d been hard enough for him, hearing about the attack on his old crew, and then going to the hospital to visit and gather intel. Jake wasn’t built for subterfuge, even more so than Barclay. Going to visit old friends, even estranged ones, with an ulterior motive - he could see it didn’t sit well with the kid.

And now, here he was, lacing up his shoes to go out and try to talk to the Hornets.

“Try and talk them down, try and get information, but don’t go gettin’ yourself hurt, or implicatin’ yourself,” Mama recapped. “If you need anything, and I do mean anything, you come get me or Barclay.”

“I will,” said Jake.

Barclay glanced at her, and she looked his way, read whatever was in his expression, and nodded a little. She squeezed Jake’s shoulder lightly before she left them to it.

“Jake,” said Barclay, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Mama asked me to,” said Jake, bemused.

“You don’t have to say yes, Jake, that’s why she asked instead of telling you. That mess out there - I’ve seen that before. I’ve seen my friends form armed mobs. I’ve seen them do it looking for me.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Same reason the Hornets are out there. Fear. They’re scared and they want to protect themselves.”

“And I want to protect them too!”

“I know you do, but it’s dangerous for you. And it’s hard to see people like that and know that. If you weren’t wearing your disguise. They’d want to kill you too, same as the actual monsters.”

Jake sighed. “Yeah…”

“So just… I’m not saying don’t go, but you don’t have to, and you can come home any time you want, and no one will be mad.”

“The Pine Guard needs me,” Jake said, “and I want to help! What they do is important!”

“You’re more important.”

That was probably a pretty awful thing to feel, too. But he couldn’t care about that.

Jake looked up at him, and then smiled. “Thanks, Barclay,” he said. “I love you too. But you’re wrong. Kepler is my home, and so is Earth. I love it, and I want to protect it. And the Hornets might not be my friends anymore, but I don’t want them to get hurt. If something… not tubular… happens to them,” he looked a little green at the thought of the things that could happen, “and I didn’t do everything I could to stop it? Then I’m not gonna like myself very much, and loving yourself is very important.”

“I still don’t like the idea of you being out there,” said Barclay.

“I’ll be super careful,” Jake told him.

“But I’m really proud of you.”

“Thanks, Barclay.”

“And I’ll still be proud if you come home, okay? Because it means you’re bein’ cautious.”

“It’s important to know your limits!” Jake said, sounding a little more like himself.

Barclay ruffled his hair, and Jake swiped half-heartedly at him for it. “Sure is.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thanks to @TAZScripts on tumblr for some canon dialogue!
> 
> A rare chappie free of any character death. You're welcome.

Sheriff Nealy looked exhausted. If she weren’t nursing a bit of a grudge over him bringing her into the station for an interrogation because she’d saved three people from burning building. Literally. She still smelled like smoke.

"You're a good kid, Madeline, but every time I turn around you're at another accident scene and I can't really ignore that."

"Bad luck ain't a crime, is it?" She asked.

"No, but arson is."

"Arson? Half the town saw lightning strike that building, how am I supposed to cause lightning?" Unfortunately, she couldn’t explain why she’d been over on Vine Street in the middle of a freak storm. 

"You've been hanging around that Thacker kid since -" The Sheriff went quiet.

Mads raised her eyebrows. "Since my family died? Yeah. Guess my social circle changed a bit. Just so I'm clear on what is and isn't a crime in Kepler these days. Making a new friend and bein' in the wrong place at the wrong time are -"

"Oh, for Pete's sake."

"- but detaining your citizens without suspicion of a crime is perfectly legal?"

"If you want me to charge you with something, I have more than enough grounds, I was just hoping you would explain yourself so I wouldn't have to."

"Charge me with what?"

"Arson."

"That was an act of nature," she insisted, even as she was still trying to figure out how, exactly, to kill something that had electricity powers, because it was kinda futile to fight nature.

"I think if I looked at your friend Thacker's research I'd find enough to convince a jury otherwise."

Mads was about to genuinely scoff when it occurred to her that if she knew Thacker at all, and in the last few months she was pretty sure she did, she knew he had something about lightning control in one of his damn notebooks. "Uh," she said. "You watch too many movies, Sheriff."

"Besides," he said. "I wasn't talking about the fire today."

Mads froze. "That was my property," she said.

"Mmhm, and because you didn't file an insurance claim for it I didn't charge you with arson for it, but it was still illegal to burn the whole place down like that. It's a hazard for forest fires, you know."

She felt a chill run down her spine unrelated to the damn monster running around town. "You wouldn't," she said, but she didn't know if he would, was the thing.

"I don't want to," he said, "but people in my town are getting hurt and I think you have answers."

"You're assuming there's answers to be had."

"Don't play games with me."

"I'm not. I've been lookin’ for answers, Sheriff, for the better part of a year now. So you can threaten me all you want, but I don't know what the hell is going on in Kepler any more'n you."

Sheriff Nealy looked at her, and then deflated. "There's something wrong with my town. I'm not gonna charge you with arson. I'm not gonna charge you with anything, I'm just…"

She hesitated. She didn't have answers, but she sure as hell had theories – theories that would get her put in protective custody and shipped off to a psych ward. "I don't know anything," she told him. "But…"

Tell him the truth, something in her said, the part of her that wanted nothing more than to believe someone beside her, someone more qualified, could handle this and she could go back to her life.

Tell him you'll tell him if you find anything out, the rest of her said. Leave the door open, let him think she's just as lost as him, and she could give him just enough to help her out later on if she needed it.

The lights flickered. And then went out.

In the glow of the emergency lighting – her heart hammered as she thought about the glow of moonlight – she saw the sheriff stand up.

"Y'all got a generator?" She asked.

"Yeah, that's where I'm headed."

Mads took a breath. "Don't," she said.

"Excuse me?"

"That's where it'll be. It's smart. They're always smart, but this one… It's been planning." A door opened somewhere outside in the building, and she froze. "There's other people here?"

"It's the sheriff's office, it's never empty—"

But she was already running out into the hall. Nealy swore and followed her – she looked up and down the hall and almost missed the deputy heading outside. "Shit," she said. "Shit, shit, shit. I need a weapon."

"Like hell you do," said Nealy.

"This looks bad, I know, but it's gonna look a whole lot worse when that thing tears your deputy to shreds. Assuming it doesn't just fry him – Donny Price had a heart attack yesterday, the man's fit as a fiddle, this thing got him on his jog, I am not lying." As she spoke she finally found a collapsing baton on a desk and flicked it open. "Lock the other doors, I'll get your deputy, just lock the doors and – get everyone away from the windows."

Mads had no idea if he'd listen to her, but she didn't have time. She strode outside in the direction the deputy had gone.

Outside it wasn't hard to figure out where he was, because there was something standing over him, and Mads didn't know what to do except put her fingers to her lips and whistle.

The monster swung around to eye her and she braced herself as if for a fight. "Looking for me?" She yelled. It stepped away from the deputy with a menacing chittering of its weird insectoid mouth, and Mads waited as long as she dared as it approached. And waited for it to move further from the deputy. And waited. And turned and flat-out sprinted away, a tight turn around the corner and oh shit this was a long straight and she was losing the head start.

Thacker came careening around the corner on his bike and skidded to a halt. For a second the monster seemed taken aback. Then it charged forward again. He fumbled around, grabbed something, and came up with—

"Shit,” said Mads, and dropped to the ground, hoping Thacker was at least a decent shot.

* * *

"You Franc?" Gen asked, surveying the other woman. 

She was young, probably a bit younger than Gen, but her narrowed eyes were bright and more than a little suspicious. "That's me,” she said. Franc kept her hands in the pockets of her oversized bomber jacket, so Gen didn’t bother trying to hold her hand out to shake. 

Gen just nodded to her and said, "Gen."

Franc nodded back, and pulled out a stack of bills. A large one. Suitably large.

Gen smiled just a little at the prospect of the money - this was shaping up to be such an easy transaction, and with a tidy profit margin, considering no one wanted goods this hot. She'd bought this rig for a pittance.

"Where's a small towner like you get this much change?" She asked, casual as could be, as she unlocked her trunk.

"Investments," said Franc. "Pretty easy to see the patterns where something is about to crash, sell right before, buy into a competitor."

"Oh, legitimate business, huh?"

"Probably more criminal than this from a moral standpoint," said Franc, and Gen snorted.

"Which stock?"

"Tylenol."

Gen's hands slipped on the crate. "Uh. In '82?"

"Convinced my aunt to buy stock in Advil right before it crashed. You want some gum?"

"No, I'm good."

Six years ago, Gen was a fresh face on the underworld scene, and still living in the Midwest. She had seen probably every second of news coverage on the Tylenol murders. If this chick had predicted them somehow - she shook it off. Best not to worry about whether she was dealing with a murderer until she was far, far away from her. She flipped open the latches on the crate and opened it for Franc to inspect.

"Looks pretty choice," said Franc. "I would ask if it works, but, if it doesn't I'll get it to."

"Not sure I could get it to work to test it. What do you need it for, anyway?"

"I need to monitor some electromagnetic frequencies I think are being caused by monsters in the woods and I can't do it with my own set up so I'm going to piggyback off of the Observatory and its research."

Gen wished for the days when a creepy person saying they were looking for monsters was 100% proof they were insane, without room for doubt. But that mess in Jersey had complicated her view of things.

"Well. I wish you luck with all of that," said Gen. "Everything look to be in order?"

"Sure does," Franc said approvingly. She closed the case of surveillance equipment and pulled it towards herself, offering the stack of cash in turn.

No sooner did Gen's hands close on her profits than someone said, "Kepler Sheriff's Department. No one move."

"Aw, hell," said Franc.

A man in a uniform stepped out of the woods, and Gen put her hands up reflexively. He wasn't looking at her, but she did some quick math and didn't like the odds on running away, vis a vis some of the trigger happy small town Sheriff with a gun on his hip.

"Hey, Sheriff," Franc said. She sounded resigned. "It ain't what it looks like."

"Why don’t you step away from the box, Jay." The sheriff approached.

There was a pause, and then Franc moved. She knocked the lid shut with her elbow and spun around to flip the latches down into place.

He froze. Gen watched the two of them as the sheriff stared at Franc. "Now why would you do a damn fool thing like that, Jay?"

"Accident," said Franc - Jay? - blithely. "Listen, I'd be delighted to show you what's in it."

"Uh-huh," the sheriff said. He glanced at Gen, who tried to convey with a look that she was not involved in this tomfoolery in any stretch of the imagination.

"I just, I'm just gonna need you to get a warrant first, is all." She pulled an apologetic expression.

Gen tried not to smile at the look of absolute exhaustion on the sheriff's face. The wheels might be spinning off of this situation, but at least the cop was just as miserable about the whole thing. He reached the car and examined the box lying on the hood, sighing a little at the combination lock.

"Don't suppose you want to explain what's in the box, or maybe give me the combination?" He turned to Gen.

"Sheriff - I'm sorry, I'm from out of town, what did you say your name was?"

"Sheriff Nealy."

"A pleasure. I'm Gen. Am I being detained, or can I leave?"

"Oh, you're being detained."

"Great, okay, so, I will cooperate."

Franc looked at Gen, wide-eyed. Serves you right if I did throw you under the bus, Gen thought. Luckily for Franc (Jay?), she trusted this cop a lot less than she did the crazy chick buying hot surveillance gear.

"But I will need to have my lawyer present first. And also a warrant. Both of those things."

"I swear to - Bluejay Wilson, I'm going to call your folks when I get back to the station, and if they know what you're up to this time--"

Franc held up her hands. "I'm not up to anything. This is Schrodinger's evidence right here. If you open it you'll know if a crime has been committed or not but until you open it... You just don't know. And if there was a crime and you crack this open without a warrant, you're gonna compromise the evidence."

"Then I suppose you both can sit in a holding cell until the judge gets back into town on Monday. You license, please, miss. Why don't we get your registration too while you're at it?”

Which led to a pretty humiliating ride to a dinky little police station in the back of a dinky little police cruiser in a dinky little town. But she turned to Franc and said, “Bluejay?”

And watched heat rise in Franc’s cheeks. “Franc is… a nickname,” she admitted grudgingly.

* * *

“We didn’t really get to talk before,” Mama said.

Ranger Newton twisted his hands in his lap. “Not much t’say, I guess. You… hunt monsters. And have done for a while? And I got a talkin’ sword.”

She glanced away from the road to eye the sword in question. “Yeah, we’ll get into that later,” she said pointedly.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“The point is, you didn’t seem exactly sold on the Pine Guard. And I ain’t sayin’ you gotta join, although I will tell you we need the help - and the sword.”

“Naw, I know, I’m just…” He looked in the rearview mirror, at Aubrey unconscious in the backseat. “I’m a coward, Mama, is the truth. Someone tried to get me into all this junk years ago and I said no.”

“How long ago?”

There was a pause. She imagined he was doing some math. “Well, I was born in ‘75, so… ‘93.”

She exhaled quietly. That was better than she’d expected. There had been a moment there were she couldn’t remember how much younger than Val he was, and she wasn’t sure what she would’ve said if Duck had said 1987.

“After your folks. Uh. Died,” he said. “Well after. I didn’t--”

“You ain’t gotta justify yourself to me, Duck,” she said, and found she meant it. “You were eighteen. I was barely ready to do this job at 23.”

“Not sure I’m ready now,” he muttered.

She let that hang in silence for a while.

Duck said, “This crap, it got your family killed?”

“Could get a whole lotta people killed if I’m not real careful with who I let in on it. But it’s also gotten a lot of my people killed. Duck, there haven’t been many natural sudden deaths in Kepler. Not for thirty years. We understanding each other?”

She could think of a dozen names off the top of her head who weren’t even Pine Guard. People the whole town knew. People she should’ve saved, but couldn’t.

“I don’t wanna get killed by a monster,” he said. “But… I’ve had a lot of soup.”

“Huh?”

“Nothin’. Don’t worry about it. I’m gonna help, I guess, much as I can. I’m tough, tougher than your average bear, but I’m still kinda useless in a fight.”

“You weren’t useless today.”

“They asked me if I knew you at that weird castle - Sylvain? And I said I didn’t ‘cause they only called you Mama.”

“Who’d ya talk to?”

“Uh, fellow by the name of Vincent. Got a bit of a,” he gestured to indicate his head and face.

She grinned. “Yeah, he’s a goatman. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Do you want me to call you that? ‘Cause you’re not exactly old enough to be my mama, Madeline.”

It was so strange to hear her own name, now. She shook her head. “Stick to Mama, if you don’t mind. It’s a little weird, I guess to an outsider, but they’ve been calling me that for the better part of thirty years. It’s more my name than Madeline is, now.”

“It’s a nickname,” he said. And he nodded a little, like that was that.

* * *

Thacker, shockingly, wasn’t a terrible shot.

Unfortunately, bullets mostly seemed to annoy the thing rather than doing it any especial harm, but it did annoy it enough to send it running off around the building, shrieking.

Thankfully, it’d run straight past Mads and in the opposite direction of the unconscious deputy. She pushed herself to her feet and was scrambling into a run before she was fulling standing. She grabbed Thacker’s arm to drag him along with her. “Help me with him,” she said.

“With who?” He glanced over his shoulder at his bike briefly.

But then they rounded the corner and he swore quietly at the sight of the man. “He alive?”

“Yeah, yeah, so far, grab his feet and I’ll get his shoulders.”

When they got closer, Thacker said, “Is that Zeke Owens?”

“Think so,” she said. 

They picked him up and hauled him towards the door of the sheriff’s office. Mads didn’t have to figure out how to open the door without dropping the deputy, thankfully, because Nealy threw the door open and ushered them in. “Is he--”

“He’s breathing,” she said. “Think I interrupted it this time. There a room without windows?”

“The holding cells - whole hallway has barred windows - there’s a storeroom with a first aid kit.”

“Thacker, you barricade the doors.”

“I think anything worth barricading the doors with is heavier than this guy,” said Thacker, who already looked pretty exhausted by the exertion of carrying Owens.

The Sheriff rolled his eyes and picked Owens up himself, bridal-style. “Help her with the doors. There’s bolts on all of them.”

-

“What’s going on?” Franc asked, her face pressed between the bars of the holding cell.

“Don’t worry about it,” someone grunted - Sheriff Nealy.

Gen swung her feet down off the bunk. She’d been feigning nonchalance since the gunshots went off. Getting antsy about guns was a pretty clear sign of a rube. But the Sheriff had the sound of strain in his voice and this was officially getting weird. “Wait,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“Deputy’s unconscious,” said Franc. “Fucking Owens. I went to high school with him. Nealy--”

“I said don’t worry about it,” the sheriff replied.

Gen got up and joined Franc at the bars of the cell. A young woman came into the hall with a scrawny guy behind her, both of them looking grim. They both had guns. “Uh, is this a fucking holdup?”

Nealy glanced at them - the shotgun in the woman’s hand and the pistol in the man’s - and then sighed. “They’re with me,” he said shortly. Reluctantly.

Gen glanced at Franc and found Franc looking back. From Franc’s face, these guys were not deputies, and something was going down. Unfortunately, she could tell that because Franc looked just a little gleeful, and Gen was quickly learning that meant trouble. She grinned in spite of herself. She could handle trouble. 

“Wilson,” said the woman. “What’d ya do?”

“Just asked Sheriff Nealy to get a warrant, is all.”

“She was buyin’ something from Ms. Rally here,” said Nealy, gesturing to Gen, who waved. “Won’t tell me what.”

“We’re gonna need all hands on deck, Nealy, I think you’d better let them out. Especially because a metal cage ain’t exactly where I want innocent bystanders right now.”

Nealy sighed. “Yeah, I was thinkin’ the same thing. Rally’s a flight risk, but I’m not havin’ her die in my station for a minor crime.”

“Die?” Gen said.

“Bystanders to what?” Franc asked. “All hands on deck for what?”

“No, no, let’s back up, what’s this about me possibly dying?”

“Unlock the door and let’s all get into the storeroom, actually,” said the man. “I think it’s specifically after Mads, in which case--”

The woman interrupted, “If it’s after me I should go out there and lead it away from town.”

“I already told you that’s not a feasible course of action,” he said sharply.

Gen stepped back to let Nealy approach the cell door, but he didn’t seem concerned by Franc hanging on the bars.

“Hey, Madeline,” said Franc. “This the same thing from last summer?”

There was a pause and Gen moved closer to see what this Madeline’s expression was. Slightly ashen and kind of like she’d just been punched in the stomach, with soot smudged across her forehead like she’d wiped at it with a dirty hand. And she said, “Not exactly.”

“But it’s related?”

“Hey, Wilson, how about you shut up,” the man said.

“No, she deserves t’know the stakes,” said Madeline. “We think it’s the same sorta thing.”

“I knew it wasn’t a bear attack,” Franc said breathlessly.

Nealy looked at Franc. “How about you quit buggin’ her, Jay, yeah?” When Franc nodded, he turned to the other two. “You said you wanna hole up in the storeroom, Thacker?” 

Thacker pushed his glasses up into place. “Unless you have an idea on how to fight something that just shrugged off a couple bullets.”

“Nothin’ comes to mind,” said Nealy. “Ladies, please.”

And Gen didn’t really like where this was going, but Madeline had said metal cage and dying and, also, Nealy was right. She did plan to run as soon as she got the chance. This was the gateway to getting that chance. So she carefully made her way past the sheriff, past Madeline and Thacker, and into the storeroom, where there was an unconscious man slumped in a corner

She turned as the rest of them filed into the room. “Hey, guys?” She said. “This is a waking nightmare.”

“Yeah,” Nealy sighed.

“Is this - is this what this town is like?” Gen asked. “What thing? What happened last summer? I am never taking another fucking small town job, oh my - this is. I live in Chicago. We spawned Al freakin’ Capone and everyone just, thinks the Cubs are gonna win, every year they think ‘hey maybe this is our year’ and it’s still not as absolutely insane as whatever is going on here.”

“Hey,” said Madeline, “breathe.”

“And stop yelling, it’s a small room and I’m not sure how acute its hearing is,” said Thacker.

“I would like a better explanation, actually,” Nealy said.

Gen buried her face in her hands. “Oh, great, even the cop agrees with me.”

Madeline took a deep breath. “Okay. The thing is, monsters are real.”

“I fucking knew it,” Franc said.

“Oh, fuck, not again,” Gen said.

“Monsters are what?” Nealy said.

* * *

"Um,” Aubrey said, and Mama felt a little bad for her, because she looked completely thrown for a loop. How the girl hadn’t realized she had real magic, Mama didn’t know, but it definitely seemed like she she hadn’t. “So. I - I - I can magic?” Immediately something seemed to occur to her because she said, “Magic is real?”

“Yeah, Aubrey, what you did up there tonight was real, actual magic.” And apparently the girl had no answers as to how the hell she’d come to be able to do it. “So I guess that’s the first big thing: magic is real. Because there’s a place that magic comes from.”

And she explained. But that feeling of something like pride, to be able to induct this young woman into the wider world and her powers, was soured. Because eventually, Mama would have to tell her what else crossed over. Because it wasn’t just the sylphs, who - at Mama’s nod - began to take off their disguises.

She looked to Aubrey for her response.

“Oh, okay,” said Aubrey, in a slightly strained voice, but she didn’t seem to be freaking out.

“You okay?” She prompted. “You all right? I know this is a lot.”

But Aubrey was already recovering. “Yeah, no, I’ve watched movies and TV shows before, so this actually isn’t as surprising as you might think.”

Mama laughed, because it was just so nonchalant, so adaptive, and absolutely the best response she’d heard in thirty years. “Most people don’t take this as well, so I’m glad that you are. Listen--”

“Well, it’s one of those things where I’ve always, you know, no matter how skeptical you are about, like, sci-fi and fantasy stuff. There’s also always a part of your mind that’s like ‘but maaaaaybe’,” and she wavered her hand back and forth in the air. “And so, like, this is one of those things where it’s like, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sure. Sure sure sure.”

Mama blinked a little. This was incredibly well-adjusted. “So that’s. The truth of the matter. Monsters... are... real. But as is the case with so many of life’s profound curiosities, well, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

But instead of telling her then and there, about the Abominations, about the Pine Guard and its sacred duty, she just looked at Aubrey’s bright expression and how relaxed she was, even as a room full of sylphs without their disguises eyed her curiously. And she couldn’t bring reality down on her. So she just said, “There’s something I gotta show you.”

“More than this?”

“More than this,” said Mama. She glanced at Aubrey’s boots and asked, “Can you hike a little in those?”

* * *

Thacker pulled out his flashlight and clicked it on. It cast the room in strange contrast of shadows and light. “Every two months or so, something weird happens in Kepler,” he explained. “It started in August, with…”

“When it killed my family,” said Mads, since he didn’t seem capable of finishing the sentence.

Gen looked horrified. “It killed… I’m so sorry.”

“Everyone gets one sorry for your loss, and then you’re done,” Mads told her. “We have work to do and not a lot of time for you to be uncomfortable because you don’t know what to say to me.”

“What kind of creature was it?” Franc asked.

Mads smiled a little. At least Franc could be counted on to focus on the monster. “It was big, and winged, with glowing eyes. Thacker and I tracked it to a cave and killed it, but two months later something else came through. A mud monster. Kinda like a weird… salamander thing. That one we had to kill with magnesium and fire. It was sensitive to light and heat. Then it was a gigantic dog kinda thing, and we drowned it in the quarry. Now we’re dealing with bug monsters.”

“Bug monsters?” Gen demanded.

She nodded and said, “They control electricity.”

While they were chewing on that piece of information, Thacker chimed in: “There’s some sort of atomic excitation and electrical charge happening. Unfortunately they have hard exoskeletons that can distribute force and resist heat.”

“Meaning… you have no idea how to fight the evil electrical bug monsters,” said Gen.

“Can’t shoot ‘em, can’t burn ‘em.”

There was a sudden buzzing sound as every electrical item in the building suddenly came on, and the light bulb burst in its cage above them, showering broken glass down on their heads. And then the silence came again, ringing and final.

Nealy finally spoke up. “And you said it’s after you, Madeline?” His expression was thunderous, but his voice stayed level, if curt. He made no move to shake the glass from his hair and the shoulders of his uniform.

“I interrupted it attacking Mr. Price and the Hall house,” she said. “It ain’t thrilled about that.”

“And how long until it gets bored waitin’ and starts going after innocent people? Or decides that’s the best way to draw you out?”

“Assumin’ it doesn’t just come and kill us all, not long.”

“You should have told me. It’s my job to protect this town - how am I supposed to do that if I don’t know that there are damn monsters running around?”

“By the time it would’ve taken you to realize I was telling the truth and not crazy, Thacker and I’d already killed the thing.”

“Well it’s not exactly working for you now, is it?” He asked.

“We’re gonna find a way to kill it. Right, Thacker?”

Thacker was already going through the bottles of cleaning supplies, lining them up in the dull light of his flashlight. “Yeah,” he said. “I just need to find something that’ll degrade the long-chain polymer of a glucose derivative--”

The out of towner - Gen - suddenly made a frustrated sound and pushed past Thacker, grabbed a bottle of wasp spray, and shook it. “You think too much,” she said.

“...Huh.”

“I got ants in my dorm room once, and we sprayed them with Windex. Worked faster than the bug spray,” said Mads, picking up the bottle of Windex. “She’s right, though. These are bug creatures, let’s fight ‘em like bugs.”

“Insects breathe through their exoskeletons via spiracles,” said Franc.

“So you’re saying if we dump something nasty enough on ‘em--” Nealy asked.

“They’ll breathe straight poison. Yeah.”

Mads realized she was grinning, almost baring her teeth, and she still couldn’t for the life of her figure out why, but this felt good. Getting shit done. Protecting the town.

“All right, y’all,” she said. “Let’s go kill some monsters.”

**Author's Note:**

> Since everyone is thanking servers: thanks to the folks in the Danbrey server, the Sternclay server, the Moschicane server, the secret server, the Amnesty Obsessed server, the Mama server that only exists in my head, the anti Lucas Miller server, the server that hates servers being mentioned, and the Hot Daga server that let me take over the #mcelroys server for a solid month while I binged TAZ. You're all getting linked to this.
> 
> Special thanks to Gen and Franc, two server pals who let me steal their names, and to the folks who read this and threatened me with death for making Mama sad. 
> 
> This fic is clocking in at over 20k words in my scriv file right now and you'd better believe it'll be well over 50k.
> 
> So strap in.
> 
> I'm on tumblr @keplersheetz and I'll be posting some extended author's notes there when I get some sleep, including some deets on Barclay's past trauma cos you best believe that what i described was an actual and famous Bigfoot sighting.


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